Merry Christmas, I Suppose
by Shakespeare's Lemonade
Summary: Danny has nothing to do for Christmas since his only family is across the world for the entire week. Somehow he finds himself at Steve's door and gets more than he came for as he is introduced to a traditional McGarrett Christmas.


"Merry Christmas, I Suppose"

Shakespeare's Lemonade

Rating: K+

Genre: Friendship/Family

Summary: Danny has nothing to do for Christmas since his only family is across the world for the entire week. Somehow he finds himself at Steve's door and gets more than he came for as he is introduced to a traditional McGarrett Christmas.

A/N: One-shot. I know everyone's doing Christmas stories, but I was inspired... or have too much time on my hands. Hooray for Christmas break!

_Merry Christmas, I Suppose_

Danny Williams tried his best to forget what month it was, but that was something of a challenge with all the wreaths and Santa Clauses all over town. There was even a Nativity scene outside of 'Iolani Palace which he had to pass every day at work and be reminded that it was indeed Christmastime. His usual grumblings became worse, and Chin and Kono took to calling him Ebeneezer.

However, Steve didn't tease him. He didn't try to get him in the "Holiday Spirit." He let him rant about how stupid everything was and didn't argue. It was starting to piss Danny off.

The week came to an end all too soon. Chin and Kono left early on Friday to have Christmas with Malia's family. They would spend Saturday with Chin's parents, and Sunday with Kono's. The invited Danny and Steve to come along, of course, but both of them said no. Steve said he already had plans.

_Sure he does_, Danny thought.

As Steve was closing up the office for the weekend, Danny stood in the middle of the room, wondering what he was supposed to do now.

"Hey," Steve said.

"Huh?"

"If you want to come over Saturday night, you're welcome to."

"I thought you had plans."

"I do."

Steve left after that, and Danny put the invitation out of his head. He didn't want to spend Christmas Eve with Steve, or with anyone. Anyone but Grace, who was in England for the whole week. They wouldn't get to have Christmas until New Year's.

Driving back to his surprisingly nice new apartment, Danny continued grumbling to himself. He couldn't listen to the radio because it was all Christmas music, and he hated Christmas music. All of it.

Danny knew he was being a Scrooge. He couldn't help it. He wasn't exactly the most positive person under normal circumstances. He knew that being around other people would help, but he wanted to wallow in self-pity for a while. He didn't want to admit he had anything to be happy about.

So, sitting down to his TV dinner—not that he couldn't cook; he just didn't want to—Danny half watched, half ignored the ubiquitous airing of _It's a Wonderful Life_. He used to really love that movie as a kid. His family watched it every year as they decorated their tree.

Danny didn't have a tree this year. They were too expensive, and he would just end up having to clean up a mess of fir needles afterward. An artificial tree was out of the question.

Danny fell asleep on the couch as George Bailey jumped off the bridge to save Clarence.

Saturday morning came along all too soon. Danny sat at his nice kitchen counter, turning his coffee cup in circles. It was Christmas Eve, and Danny had absolutely nothing to do. Well, he could go over to Steve's house, but that would require him to actually remember that it was Christmas.

He ended up sitting down in front of the TV again in yesterday's clothes and channel surfing the afternoon away. Finally feeling disgusting enough, Danny decided to get up and take a shower. Not that he had a reason to because no one would be seeing him.

It was late afternoon by the time he decided he had to get out of the house or go insane. He drove aimlessly for a while. Traffic was terrible with the last minute Christmas shopping and people going to visit their families. Danny realized with a grumble that he hadn't even bought Grace's present yet. He had a whole week after all.

It wasn't even that Danny was so sentimental about the day. He was more annoyed that the only family he could spend Christmas with was on the other side of the world. Yes, there were Chin and Kono and their huge Hawaiian family. No thank you. Yes, there was Steve and whatever insane Christmas tradition he had planned.

In the end, Danny's subconscious mind betrayed him as he found himself driving down a familiar street. It wasn't until he had stopped in Steve's driveway that Danny realized where he was, and it was too late to leave quietly because he was certain Steve heard him pull up.

So, resigning himself to spending Christmas with Steve, Danny mad his way up the concrete path and knocked on the door.

As it opened he heard Christmas music and smelled food cooking. Steve looked surprised, but he covered it quickly.

"You're here?" he said, masking his shock with amusement.

"Uh, yeah," Danny said. "Are you having someone else over?"

"No," Steve said as he went back into the house.

Danny followed him through the living room noticing that the house seemed very cold. And Steve was wearing long sleeves. "But you're cooking?"

"Yes."

Danny shrugged to himself. Of all the things Steve had done, this wasn't all that weird.

Once in the kitchen, Danny watched as Steve poured something from a pan into a couple of mugs. It steamed, and Danny thought about how rare a sight that was anymore.

"Here," Steve said, handing Danny one of the mugs.

"What's this?" Danny asked.

"Apple cider."

"Is that why you turned the air conditioning up?"

Steve only smirked as he took a slow sip of his cider. Then he went back out into the living room. Following again, Danny noticed that the house was decorated with green garland and red ribbons on the stair rail and various Christmas themed objects about the living room. There was a bright red poinsettia on the coffee table.

Suddenly, Steve turned off the background music, and most surprising of all, he sat down at the piano in the corner of the room. The piano Danny had never seen anyone touch.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

Steve looked at him like he should know. "It's Christmas," was all he said. Then he opened the lid and set up a songbook. "Stand over there." he gestured without looking to the place where the piano curved.

"Why?"

Then Steve looked at Danny again with the same expression. "It's Christmas," he said again with a little more force.

"Okay, but it might help if you would explain what we're doing here." In spite of his protest, however, Danny did move into the position Steve indicated.

"Okay," Steve said. "Every year on Christmas Eve we sing Christmas songs. Is it just me, or is that really obvious?"

"Yeah. Who's we?"

"My family."

"Oh. See, now it all makes sense. The food, the decorations, the singing..."

"And since you have no problem singing in the car, I take it there will be no more objections?"

"Yeah. So, you're gonna play?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

"Why do you sound surprised?"

"Because I've never seen you do it before."

"That's because I've never done it when you were around."

"So, just to be clear, you do know how, right?"

Steve rolled his eyes. "Yes. I know how. Since I was a little kid. My mom taught me. The last couple of years..."

"What? Before she died?"

"Yeah. The last couple of years she let me play at Christmas. It's kind of a big deal."

Danny nodded. "Okay. Hit it, maestro." He watched Steve shift into position and begin playing. As he sang along to familiar Christmas carols, Danny wondered how much it took for Steve to tell him about his mom. The most he'd heard before was about when she died, but nothing about her personality or Steve's relationship with her.

Steve admitting that the Christmas singing was a big deal to him said a lot. Danny wasn't about to belittle that. And interestingly enough, Steve could sing and play at the same time. With just the two of them, the rafters didn't exactly shake, but something about the solemn tunes of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" felt like Christmas. Like the real thing, somehow. Not the crazy shopping or the family shuffling, but just Christmas. As it should be.

Steve finished the last song, stood up, closed the piano, and walked over to the burly fir tree in the corner of his living room. He switched on the lights as if in some kind of tradition.

"You wanna light the candles?" Steve said, bringing Danny back to Earth.

Danny saw a cluster of fat, red candles on the coffee table, some on the piano and some in the windows. He went back to the kitchen and found some matches Steve had left on the counter. As he lit the candles, Steve stood staring out the front window into the darkening evening.

Throwing away the used matches, Danny stood in the opening between the living room and the study. He watched his friend's shoulders rise and fall to some unknown rhythm. Sometimes Danny wondered how Steve managed to get out of bed in the morning, much less live his life to the extent that he planned a whole Christmas event for just himself.

"Hey, are you okay?" Danny asked.

Steve turned around. "What?" He had been lost in thought and honestly didn't know what Danny was talking about.

"You seem very... affected." Danny tried to use the least specific word he could.

Steve nodded. "I am," he said. "But I'm fine. It's good. I'm glad you came."

"You were really gonna do all this alone?"

"Yeah?"

Danny shook his head.

"What?"

"Nothing," Danny said as he sunk into the couch. "You surprise me sometimes. I mean, I was all upset because I didn't get to have Christmas with Grace until next week, but you... you weren't gonna have Christmas with anyone. Just you and your cold house and your mom's piano."

Steve sat down in the chair across from Danny. "I guess it's all what you make it," he said. "I decided I wanted to have Christmas like I did when I was a kid. I wasn't expecting anyone to do it with me, and yeah, that's a little depressing, but it's worth it."

"Worth it? What does that mean?"

"That it's better to have something than not do it at all."

"Wow, you... really make me feel like a jerk."

"I didn't mean—"

"No, of course you didn't, and that's why. I mean, I could have tried to make the best of things, but it seems like I never do that."

"But that's why this works." Steve gestured between the two of them. "I'm the optimist; you're the pessimist."

"It's exhausting." Danny leaned his head back. "So, what else do you do on Christmas?"

Steve smiled. "We stay up until midnight, and then we open presents. Of course, there's a lot of eating until then. Usually, we would end up falling asleep in the living room. Then in the morning, we make sand angels and have omelets and hot chocolate for breakfast."

"You did this every year?"

"Every year. Until I was fifteen."

"What did you do after that?"

Steve shrugged. "Whatever the people I was with were doing. If I was alone, nothing."

"What made you decide to do it again this year?"

"Moving on, I guess. That seems backward, but remembering it makes all that stuff in between less important."

"Okay, then. You mentioned food?"

Steve laughed. "It's almost ready. I'm not sure if it's any good. I made all the stuff my mom used to, but I didn't experiment first because I thought I'd be the only one eating it."

"So if I die, at least it will be in the pursuit of the perfect McGarrett Christmas."

"See. Pessimist."

Steve got up and went into the kitchen again, but Danny stayed where he was, taking in the full atmosphere of the room. He'd been here a million times before. Slept on the couch many times. It never looked like this, though. It never made him feel like his life wasn't as crappy as he always seemed to think it was.

Somehow, Steve had managed to kill the Grinch in Danny without knowing it or meaning to. Steve killed a lot of things, to be sure, but it always seemed very calculated. This was nothing like that. This was Steve being sentimental and not the least bit reserved or embarrassed about it.

Steve brought the food, which was a bunch of stuff Danny had never seen before, but he ate without question because this was Steve's mom's food. In a way, Danny felt like he got to know her a little bit, like she was almost there with them. Maybe that's what made Steve able to do this again. It brought him closer to someone he lost nearly twenty years ago.

It was worth the awkwardness and discomfort for Danny to see it. To see a side of his partner he might never have known otherwise.

Throughout the night, they ate and talked, drank more cider, told stories and laughed to the point of almost crying a couple of times. When midnight hit, Steve went over to the tree and took out a package wrapped in gold paper.

"I didn't bring you anything," Danny said as Steve handed it to him. "I mean, I was going to next week."

Steve shook his head. "It's fine," he said. "That's not what it's about anyway. Go ahead and open it."

Danny nodded and tore open the paper to reveal a box with a lid. Pulling it open Danny saw a framed portrait of himself and Grace. It looked like a picture he'd seen before, but it was painted.

"Where did you get this?" Danny asked tearing his eyes away from the picture to look at Steve.

"I took a picture I had of you to a local artist," he said. "I thought he did a really good job."

"Yeah." Danny couldn't think of anything else to say.

"You think Gracie will like it?" Steve asked.

Danny met his eyes again. "She'll love it," he said. "She would love this."

Steve nodded. "Maybe next year if you have her on Christmas Eve you can come over again."

"What if... Well, we could come over next week. Unless that's against the McGarrett tradition."

"No, I just thought you'd want some time alone since you didn't get to see her this weekend."

"I'll tell you what. Keep the picture. We'll come over on Saturday and you can see the look on her face when she sees it."

"Are you sure you want to do that?"

"Yes. I can't think of a better way yo spend, well, New Year's Eve. Unless you have other plans."

"Well, I might have to show you the McGarrett New Year's tradition. But I would love to have you and Grace over."

"I'm sure she would love to be introduced to sand angels... which I am not doing, by the way."

"But you'll watch?"

"Watch you make a sand angle? I wouldn't miss it."

Steve smiled even bigger than he had all evening. "Merry Christmas, Danno."

Danny smiled back. "Yes," he said. "It is."


End file.
